Suggested by Mustang Bobby (and stolen from his place):
When you're home, where do you eat most of your meals: dining room, kitchen, TV tray, or some other place?
We eat entirely too many meals on the couch at the coffee table. Our dining table is right behind our couch; really, it's just an excuse to get closer to the TV.
Question of the Day
Rep. Jim Langevin Marks ADA Anniversary by Presiding Over House
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act, Rep. Jim Langevin, who is paralyzed from the chest down, made history today by being the first wheelchair user to preside over the House:
The Rhode Island Democrat, who in 2000 was the first quadriplegic elected to the House, used a newly installed mechanical lift system to gain access to the speaker's podium in his motorized wheelchair.Langevin, whose spinal cord was severed by a bullet which ricocheted off a metal locker after being accidentally discharged from a gun thought to be unloaded, recalled during a brief address today "lying in the hospital after his accident, and taking inspiration from others who had overcome life-changing injuries."
Langevin, 46, has used a wheelchair since being paralyzed in a shooting accident as a teen [when he was a Boy Scout cadet working with police].
...Langevin said his temporary turn wielding the gavel marks an important step for people with disabilities and he hopes it inspires others.
"What a powerful symbol of inclusion and opportunity for anyone who wants to serve in the United States Congress," he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press on Monday. Congress has become increasingly accessible in the past decade for people with disabilities, he added.
"I hope some other young person...will see that they can succeed, too," he said.The House was expected to pass (and may already have done so by now) H.R. 3101, the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which will:
* Restore and expand requirements for video description of television programs, in addition to requiring cable companies to make their program guides and selection menus accessible to people with vision lossRock on.
* Mandate mobile phone companies to make web browsers, text messaging, and e-mail on smart phones fully accessible
* Ensure people with vision loss have access to emergency broadcast information
* Provide $10 million in funding each year for assistive technology for deaf-blind individuals
More, always more, to be done, but teaspoons. o.oP!
News from Shakes Manor
I just received the following email (published with permission) from Iain, who, as you may recall, works in a building outside of which Transformers 3 is currently being filmed.
I just saw Michael Bay - he was freaking out and yelling at some flunkie to move a bunch of shit that was lying on the sidewalk. LOLZ.When he first told me last week about the filming going on outside his building, I replied, "Have you seen Michael Bay screaming at anyone yet?"
Michael Bay: As predictable (and explosive!) as his shitty films.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Number of the Day
Approximately one gazillion. The answer to Adam Serwer's rhetorical question about how many times conservatives are going to try to smear Shirley Sherrod "before some sense of shame or decency kicks in." [Trigger warning for discussion of violence at the link.]
Also see: Terry Krepel.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Cooking With Deeky: Tasty Meat! (Not recommended for vegetarians and vegans.)
Recommended Reading:
JuniorProf: #painresearchmatters campaign
Andy: Gay Marriage Case Declined by New Jersey Supreme Court
Lisa: Framing Children's Deviance
Fannie: Breaking: It's Rude to Assume Procreation Goes with Marriage
Latoya: Waiting For Superman Explores Education Reform Through the Eyes of Children
Brian: Fat Man Wearing White
Leave your links in comments...
Gl(b) representation on U.S. television
GLAAD just came out with its 4th annual Network Responsibility Index, which "is an evaluation of the quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television." Here's a direct link to the .pdf of the forty page report.
AFAICT, GLAAD started and stopped by collecting the most easily quantifiable data: the number of hours of original primetime network programming that included an LGBT character, and the (perceived) race of said characters. In all fairness, this was probably a *ton* of work.
While GLAAD makes commentary on how LGBT characters on each network are represented, I'm not sure how this is represented in the data. On one level, this seems fair: we could sit here all day arguing about what constitutes a positive portrayal of LGBT people (see Family, Modern). It would be nice, however, to know what percentage of transgender characters/people were transsexual women, and how much airtime was devoted to their genitals, their medical history, and/or their prowess as models, singers and/or fashionistas.
Not surprisingly, plenty of networks that had significant LGBT content exhibited race fail. While GLAAD gave ABC a "good" grade for LGBT representation, 87% of said representation was of white LGBT people. Of course, I'm not sure what the null hypothesis is here-- surely people of color are underrepresented on television.
And now for my [least] favorite part-- comparisons within the LGBT spectrum. Graphs! below the jump.
GLAAD makes the standard assumption that the LGBT represents four categories that represent all queer people. And they make nifty graphs! (Although I'm not sure why the resolution on them is wonky.)
Here's ABC, which scored a "good" for 297.5 "LGBT-Inclusive Hours" (26% of ABC programming)
[Hours of LGBT Content: Lesbian 87.5, Gay 222, Bisexual 60, Transgender 2]
NBC scored an "adequate" for 151 "LGBT-Inclusive Hours" (13% of NBC programming)
[Hours of LGBT Content: Lesbian 22.5, Gay 129, Bisexual 5, Transgender 3]
And then there's ABC Family. It scored a "good" for 36.5 "LGBT-Inclusive Hours" (37% of ABC Family programming)
[Hours of LGBT Content: Lesbian 1, Gay 35, Bisexual 0.5, Transsexual 0]
I'm hardly surprised that gay men make up the bulk of "LGBT" representation on U.S. television. As far as lesbian representation is concerned, fully-formed female characters are generally rare on TV. That said, I'm guessing that close to 100% of U.S. television programming features at some type of female character; even Bruce Pornstache mentions Tammy on occasion.
I am a bit peeved (although also unsurprised) that GLAAD trumpets this study as proof of the gains "LGBT" people have been making. What else is new, I suppose. Hooray for intersectionality.
Feminism 101: Your Underdog Lovelorn Romantic May Be My Rapist
[Trigger warning for stalking and sexual assault.]
John was a tall, dark, and handsome young man, who had come to visit Jane at college. He showed up at her dorm one morning while she was at class, and walked up to the security guard with a broad grin, clutching a bouquet of flowers. He told the older white gentleman a story about how he'd driven all night in his shitty old car, afraid it might break down during a terrible thunderstorm, but he'd arrived in one piece to surprise his girlfriend for her birthday. They'd been dating for two years—high school sweethearts, and he hoped to marry her one day. He knew the day he laid eyes on her for the first time, that he wanted her to be his forever.
The security guard liked this kid. He was charming and charismatic and smart; the thought even crossed the security guard's mind that this girl was lucky to have found such a good guy. Normally, he wouldn't break the rules for anyone, but this kid seemed all right. A nice, good-looking white kid. Just this once, he broke the rules and let John past security without his girlfriend signing in him. After all, the kid was right—it was going to be a much better surprise, super romantic, just like a movie or something, if he was waiting for her at her door when she got back from class. What a birthday present! The security guard waved him through and wished him luck.
He imagined Jane coming back from class and discovering the kid waiting at her door. She was a pretty girl; he pictured her smiling, wrapping her arms around the kid's neck, and pulling him inside her room for some hanky-panky. Ah, young love.
Nothing, so goes the cultural narrative, makes a romantic gesture even romanticker! than the enlistment of other people's help. Public proposals (in which people, usually female people, are put on the spot to make an affirmative decision about the rest of their lives in front of perfect strangers by whom they'll be judged negatively if they don't say yes, which is a whole other post) are romantic, sure, but even romanticker! are public proposals in which there are as many anonymous co-conspirators as possible: Staged events that enlist the assistance of roomfuls—or stadiums-full!—of people.
The bigger the crowd of conspirators and/or onlookers, the more romantic.
We are meant to delight in being recruited to participate in the romantic gestures of strangers. We read news stories about important people participating in public proposals, we read personal narratives about people inserting themselves into the romantic gestures of strangers, and our pop culture is positively rife with plotlines centered around strangers playing matchmaker (see this summer's Letters to Juliet) or the enlistment of strangers' help by a suitor (usually male) trying to locate and get access to the person (usually female) zie fancies.
And whether it's a madcap chase set to Motown music (every Richard Curtis film), or Billy Idol randomly stepping in with a weaponized drink cart (The Wedding Singer), or a truck driver putting pedal to metal to deliver a suitor to his Sure Thing on time (The Sure Thing), or any one of a million other variations on this conceit, we root for the guy to get the girl, and cheer on gangs of strangers enlisted to help a Nice Guy win the affections of the Girl of His Dreams.
Thus are people inclined to get caught up, in real life, in the same kinds of stories—because we believe in romance and have a fiercely-protected policy of silence about how some "romantics" are actually stalkers/predators.
Charming men later discovered to be serial rapists and/or killers have blagged their way into access to their victims not merely because their race/sex/sexuality/class are privileged, and assumed to confer upon them some statement of their ethics, but because we are exhorted from every corner of our pop culture to insert ourselves into romantic stories.
And not just those of people we know—it is, of course, fun and harmless to help our old friend Jack pick out an engagement ring for his long-time partner Jill—but of people we don't know, and about whose authentic intentions we have no clue, and no way of knowing.
All we've got is a visceral reaction—"He seems like a nice enough guy!"—the likes of which is nothing but the same old bullshit contention used to victim-blame, that there is some way possible to tell a person is dangerous, and thus victims have nothing to blame but their own failure of instinct.
Stalkers/predators are experts at framing themselves as lovelorn romantics to get access to people they've abused, or intend to abuse.
Some of them spend a very long time learning how to make this:
[The 500 Days of Summer trailer recut with creepy score.]
…look like this:
[The real 500 Days of Summer trailer, with its charming indie score.]
And in a world [/movievoice] where so many of us have access to and control over so many other people's personal information—home addresses, work addresses, phone numbers, flight information, class schedules, hotel room numbers, that childhood nickname that hardly anyone knows and if only you call it out, she's sure to turn and look expecting to see someone she trusts—and where we "friend" strangers and share stories of old classmates or coworkers or lovers reuniting after 50 years and feel part of something important when people organize, online or off, to make Happily Ever Afters of all sorts happen, it is a dangerous thing to collectively fetishize the grand romantic gesture.
Because your underdog lovelorn romantic may be my rapist.
Or hers. Or hers. Or hers...
Part of challenging the rape culture is to ensure we have consent from anyone with whom we involve ourselves romantically, even if obliquely, even if only as a co-conspirator with someone who assures us zie has consent. There is no such thing as second-hand consent. There is only helping someone get access to another person and hoping we didn't facilitate violence against another human, under the guise of "romance."
John was a tall, dark, and handsome young man, who had just found out where Jane had gone away to college. He showed up at her dorm one morning while she was at class, after buying a bouquet of flowers at the corner shop across the street, to give verisimilitude to his story about driving all night to get there for his girlfriend's birthday. It wasn't her birthday and she wasn't his girlfriend. He'd been stalking Jane for two years, ever since she broke up with him after saying he'd raped her—even though he sure didn't see it that way—and he was determined to punish her for the agony she'd put him through, leaving him like that. He knew the day he laid eyes on her for the first time, that he wanted her to be his forever.
John liked this security guard. The female guard who worked nights did not find him charming, but this old white guy was an easy mark; John put on an easy grin and a subtle version of the same fading southeastern US accent to appeal to the guard's nostalgia for the romances of his youth, and the guy crawled right into the palm of his hand. A trusting, privileged white dude. Just this once, he'd break the rules and let John past security without his girlfriend signing in him. The appeal to play a part in a real-life version of a rom-com happy ending was compelling, and, hell, he was a kid who needed to get laid once. The security guard waved John through and wished him luck.
John went to her floor and waited down the hall for Jane to arrive back from class. When she opened the door to her room, he rushed her, wrapped his hand across her mouth, pushed her inside, and raped her.
This month on the egalitarian internet
[Trigger warning: internet harassment, violence]
Earlier this month, Lisa at Questioning Transphobia wrote a post about a disturbing threat against her.
Mostly, I want to point out that it happened. I get tired of some folks talking about the internet as if it's this magical place, unburdened with the nasty aspects of the "real" world. The internet is part of the real world, and violence does take place online, real violence. And furthermore, yes, online violence sometimes does translate into offline violence.
I actually thought about whether I wanted to bring up this incident, as online violence often spreads like the common cold. This is exactly how bullying silences folks with "controversial" viewpoints.
I don't have a good sense of how frequently bloggers deal with violence. I'm a relatively new kid on the block, so I haven't had to deal with anything yet. Friends and colleagues don't forward me their hate mail. Bloggers tend not to post every threat they get; among other things, addressing every threat effectively distracts from the "controversial" ideas bloggers often wish to put forward.
If you're looking to get a sense of the virulent hate and violence I'm referring to, there's always that one infamous [Trigger warning for sexual assault, death threats, fat hatred, disablist language, and probably some other heinous stuff] Shakesville thread.
IMO, my quotes around "controversial" are one of the more depressing aspects of this violence. Sure, I don't agree with everything that folks post at Shakesville, or on the feminist blogosphere, or on the internet in general, David Brooks. But from what I gather, it's usually not the finer points of feminist theory that generate the most virulent hate.
As brilliant and insightful as so many of my colleagues are, a lot of their (and my) posts boil down to decidedly elementary ideas. Trans people are people. Women are people. Fat people are people. People with disabilities are people, etcetera. All people have the right to have their autonomy and their personhood respected.
Gasp! Maybe I'm too far gone, but I don't think the importance of universal human rights is particularly complicated or debatable. Yet, I think it's important to acknowledge where we find ourselves; a world where coming out in favor of trans people's existence, against rape, or in favor of many other expressions of personal autonomy is a good way to ensure that you're the target of violence. This is a key example of why social justice, feminist/womanist activism is still important; this world is nowhere near the safe space that all of us deserve.
Today in Transphobia
[Trigger warning: Transphobia]
Shaker Amber sends along a rather depressing story from last week:
A woman lost her firefighter husband in the line of duty not three weeks ago, and the ex-wife is already suing for the estate on the grounds that the grieving widow was born male and thus the two-year marriage was fraudulent. A fair outcome is far from certain thanks to Texas laws.
The Houston Chronicle has the story here (beware of the comments). Gina has her typically insightful analysis, as does Lisa.
I don't have much to add, aside from pointing out how scary and frustrating this sort of situation is. After I came out, I married another woman in Wisconsin (where same-sex marriage is illegal*) and it's always troubling to worry about how our marriage might be invalidated. Honestly, we don't care so much about how the government does the paperwork**, provided that it recognizes our marriage as being as valid as anyone else's.
Marriage (asterisk) isn't the same thing as marriage (period), and until marriage between any two*** people is legal in the United States, no trans person's marriage is safe.
--
* No, we're not going to debate the ethics of my marriage today.
** Okay, ultimately I really would prefer not to be listed as the "husband"-- that really burns.
*** Of course, there's also an important debate to be had about the need for the government to value all people in all relationships, not just folks in monogamous ones. That's another thread, too.
[H/T to Shakers Amber, katch001, and Euterpe813]
Quote of the Day
"Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I'm on the camera?"- Tea Party Candidate and Colorado Republican Ken Buck, putting his foot in his mouth yet again. Last week, responding to a question as to why someone should vote for him, Buck responded "Because I do not wear high heels."
Buffy the Vampire Soda
Jones Soda has just launched a new line of Buffy the Vampire Slayer themed drinks, for your geeking pleasure. The fab flavours are: Buffy's Blue Bubblegum, Dawn's A Centaur Root Beer, Xander's Strawberry Lime Elixir, Twilight's Old Moon Orange & Cream, Willow’s Green Apple Witch's Brew, and Giles's Grape Potion (see above).
I am sure they taste awful. Because grape soda is awful. No amount of hip packaging can change that. You can order yours here. Just don't drink it. (It's less collectible that way.)
[Via Andy and cross-posted.]
Consent Conschment: Dudebros Need Entertainment!
[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]
In one of the most remarkable decisions I've ever heard, a St. Louis Circuit Court jury ruled last week that explicit consent isn't necessary for "Girls Gone Wild."
A jury on Thursday rejected a young woman's claim that the producers of a "Girls Gone Wild" video damaged her reputation by showing her tank top being pulled down by another person in a Laclede's Landing bar.There is no such thing as implicit consent. That line of defense should not even have been allowed in a courtroom. And it is, of course, precisely that victim-blaming bullshit on which the jury seized to rule against the woman (who only found out she was in the video six years after the fact "after a friend of her husband's reported that she was in one of the videos).
A St. Louis Circuit Court jury deliberated 90 minutes before ruling against the woman, 26, on the third day of the trial. Lawyers on both sides argued the key issue was consent, with her side saying she absolutely refused to give it and the defense claiming she silently approved by taking part in the party.
"I am stunned that this company can get away with this," [Jane Doe] said after the verdict. "Justice has not been served. I just don't understand. I gave no consent."This, despite the fact that Doe can reportedly be heard saying "no" in the video.
But Patrick O'Brien, the jury foreman, told a reporter later that an 11-member majority decided that Doe had in effect consented by being in the bar and dancing for the photographer. In a trial such as this one, agreement by nine of 12 jurors is enough for a verdict.
"Through her actions, she gave implied consent," O'Brien said. "She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing."
"Girls Gone Wild" is a despicable franchise that has been allowed to get away with having clearly intoxicated women, some of them underage, give onscreen verbal consent or sign consent forms—and this ruling takes the defense of their predation to a whole new level. According to this jury, they don't even need to bother with verbal or signed consent: Any woman out of her house, fashionably dressed, and having a good time, maybe drinking, maybe at a bar, maybe at a party, but somewhere where there's booze and dancing, is giving "implicit consent" to be sexually assaulted, filmed, and put into a video from which she'll receive none of the profits.
Welcome to the rape culture.
[H/Ts to Shakers Gabrielle, Monica, and InfamousQBert.]
Today in Not News: The Afghanistan War Blows
Today's Big News is that Wikileaks has published 92,000 military documents leaked from the front of the Afghanistan War, in what is one of the biggest leaks in US military history.
The Guardian—Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation: "A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency."
The New York Times—Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert: "Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday."
Der Spiegel—Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It: "The documents' release comes at a time when calls for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan are growing—even in America. Last week, representatives from more than 70 nations and organizations met in Kabul for the Afghanistan conference. They assured President Hamid Karzai that his country would be in a position by 2014 to guarantee security using its own soldiers and police. But such shows of optimism seem cynical in light of the descriptions of the situation in Afghanistan provided in the classified documents. Nearly nine years after the start of the war, they paint a gloomy picture."
Reuters—Documents allege Pakistan secretly backed Taliban: "Despite efforts by the White House to contain the political fallout, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, one of Obama's closest Democratic allies, said the leaked documents raised 'serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan'."
Come on, Senator Kerry. Don't act all surprised. The biggest news about this leak should be that the horror the documents reveal isn't actually news. Not to anyone who's been paying attention to the war we're totally not supposed to be paying attention to.
As Drum notes, "the basic picture is basically the one we've known for a long time: a difficult, chaotic battlefield that's shown little progress since the very beginning of the war."
We're not remaking Afghanistan, and we never have been. That was Bush administration propaganda, which Obama & Co. were disappointingly happy to continue to promulgate as they escalated the war.
Perhaps the most important thing to come out of this document dump is that it could prove to be, as Dave Gilson suggests, "the watershed moment after which no one can honestly claim ignorance of what's really happening over there."
Let us hope. And let us hope some policy based in reality follows.
(I expect more, but I won't hold my breath.)
Part of This Complete Breakfast
Know what I was thinking about this morning? Cereal. More specifically, Urkel-Os brand cereal (the Urkelized part of your complete breakfast). Remember how yummy those were? No? You sure? Well, maybe this will help your memory:
La transcripción:
Generic maybe hip-hop plays. Steve Urkel enters someplace, perhaps a restaurant, framed photo in one hand, box of cereal in the other.Makes me wish I had something other than Cap'n Crunch at home!
Urkel: Oh Laura, my pet, I created something that'll make you love me. I got a great new cereal! Did I do that? So, hike up your pant for the Urkel-Os rant*.
Back-up Singers: Mmmm! We're Urkelized with Urkel-Os!
Urkel: Strawberry, banana, fruit flavors so fine! Just one little bite and I know she'll be mine!
Back-up Singers: Mmmm! She'll be Urkelized (Urkelized!) with Urkel-Os!
Urkel: Oh, Laura, when I find you you'll taste true love! The Urkelized part of this complete breakfast. Hehehe! Snort!
* I honestly don't know if that last word is correct. I first thought the lyric was "hike up your pants for the Urkel-Os ranch" but after listening to it five or six** times I decided it was "rant," which, honestly, doesn't make any more or less sense.
** After listening to this five or six times, I was ready to dunk my head in the toilet just to get clean.
[Cross-posted.]
Open Thread
Hosted by Sweet Honey in the Rock and Maud.
This week's open threads have been hosted by the favorite album covers of Shakesville's contributors. (To be continued!)
Doctor Who Open Thread: S5E13: The Big Bang
One last time, now we're in the post-season letdown, it's time for obsessive wankery about all kinds of minutiae!
That is to say, it's a Doctor Who Open Thread! W00t!
Please be aware that there may or will be or will have been or will have going to be or...well, something...as the lovely lady said, SPOILERS!
Spoilers may exist in this thread, in some relation to the timestream, for any and all Doctor Who media up to the end of the rebooted Season 5.
The only thing I'll say out here, in case anyone's not seen it yet, is OMM I THINK I JUST BECAME A RORY 'SHIPPER.
This is startling because I have never said that about myself in respect to any character in any show ever. But after that episode, I have to say, Rory, OMM, I love you.
